Advertising Techniques

I was doing research on marketing, and I came across an interesting blog written by Psychology and Marketing professor, Art Markman in the magazine Psychology Today.  In this blog, Markman writes about what advertisements do to their viewers.  Advertisements do not simply inform their audience about the good qualities of the product being sold, they work off of a technique called affective conditioning.  Through this technique, advertisements pair the product being sold with other objects or ideas that most consumers already find enjoyable.  For example, a commercial for a car might show the car being driven by a happy family, on a sunny day, and in beautiful scenery.  By doing this, viewers generally transfer their good feelings to the product that is being sold to them, and are likely to have a positive opinion about the product.  This could be problematic though when a person buys a product mainly because of their good feelings towards it, and end up being disappointed when they actually use it.

The way in which this article ties in with my paper is that it explains why many advertisements use thin models.  It seems that being thin is what is generally thought of as attractive, so marketers pair their product with a person that the general public will have a positive opinion toward.

What I would like to do further research on is how being thin became the ideal for the United States population.